Restraints on currency convertibility, the thinking goes, are an excuse for recidivism.

As the Marshall Plan showed us, currency convertibility is essential to outside private investment and expanded trade.

This phase would also involve the coordination of monetary policies and the movement towards intra-regional currency convertibility among all member states.

They took nearly a decade to restore their war-devastated economies and return to the currency convertibility that is necessary for insuring effective market access.

A fast track to currency convertibility is one of Mr Petrakov's pet ideas.

He tinkered with currency convertibility, by proposing multiple exchange rates that were effectively a devaluation for exporters.

While it survived, it served a useful function in obtaining agreement on some economic questions such as currency convertibility and capital transfers.

It was destabilizing speculation, emanating from lack of confidence in authorities' commitment to currency convertibility that ended the interwar gold standard.

He recommends a "rapid and decisive transition to a market economy" characterized by private property, free enterprise, currency convertibility and free prices.

Such misgivings gave way, however, largely because Mr. Yeltsin made currency convertibility a political goal, staking popularity on its early achievement.

Currency Convertibility in Eastern Europe (1991)

The Hungarians have put privatisation and foreign-trade liberalisation before currency convertibility; the Poles have done it the other way round.

Talks on currency convertibility also took place between Bulgaria and the Soviet Union during November and December.

Some analysts, including officials in the Bush Administration, say currency convertibility should be delayed until the Yeltsin Government reduces the budget deficit and raises oil prices.

Told that the company sells to Italy and buys equipment in the United States, Mr. Rubin asks detailed questions about currency convertibility.

Foreign bankers warned that in a nation where nationwide banking regulations were sometimes misinterpreted or ignored at local bank branches, currency convertibility might not be uniformly applied right away.

The liberal Foreign Investment Act of 1990 provides guarantees against nationalisation, freedom to remit capital and profits, currency convertibility, and a process for settling disputes equitably.

Currency Problem The meetings addressed the problem of currency convertibility, said Mr. Wick, who is also a consultant to the News Corporation.

This provides a measure of inflation adjustment (cola companies price to maintain profitable supply volume), allows general world-wide pricing transparency and irons out local currency convertibility and inflation.

This change in status recognized substantive market economy reforms in the areas of currency convertibility, wage rate determination, openness to foreign investment, and government control over the means of production and allocation of resources.

A former President of France, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has suggested that the community tailor these association agreements country by country, and tie them to price reform, privatization and currency convertibility in each one.

The far-reaching changes China will have to undergo to meet these criteria include removing the government's influence over commercial bank loans, which often go to failing state-owned companies, and allowing currency convertibility on current and capital account transactions.

Since Uzbekistan's independence, U.S. firms have invested roughly $500 million in the country, but due to declining investor confidence, harassment, and currency convertibility problems, numerous international investors have left the country or are considering leaving.

Professor Triffin was, for example, the architect of European currency convertibility after World War II and helped end the wartime system of bilateral trade and exchange controls, paving the way for expanded trade.

But today there is no reliable or predictable currency convertibility and therefore no equivalent opportunity for investment, trade and growth in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, no matter how much foreign aid we pump in.